“Your keeping windows closed and not doing it for hours on end.” She put a bowl of frozen jumbo shrimps under running water to defrost them and glanced at me. “You’re a vocalist, and your band has a drummer. Do you really need to practice for that long?”
“It helps me think. And I want to see if I got my creative mojo back,” I said, since it wasn’t like she was going to tell everyone on streets.
“What’s wrong with your mojo?”
“It’s been sort of MIA since my health incident. The one I told you about in the car.”
She looked me over, her eyes going soft. A warmth that had nothing to do with physical attraction unfurled. It was like…she actually cared about me as a human being, not as some hot celeb dude she could take selfies with to post on social media for likes and comments.
And I liked her. A lot. Not just for her body, not just because the kiss had been hot, but because she made me feel like a person. Somebody worthy of something genuine.
“Aren’t you completely recovered now?” she asked finally.
“Physically, yeah. But I have to be creative, too. It’s what I do. I don’t know what I’d be without it.” I didn’t want to be a parasite who didn’t do anything except live off a trust fund. Grandma had always felt that that was a despicable way to live, and I agreed one hundred percent.
“But your band has other people, like your drummer friend. Devlin. And the guitar guys. Max and Cole, right?”
I nodded, surprised she knew who they were. “We all contribute creatively. Not just to songs, but the direction of our next album, where we want to go musically… All that stuff.”
She tapped her chin. “So maybe you shouldn’t think about it.”
“What?” I let out a stunned laugh. She probably didn’t get it. She was a writer, not a performer. “I can’t do that. My career’s important.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t. But thinking about it hasn’t been working, right? Did you have any inspiration when you were drumming?” she asked. “Like you had this amazing creation going on in your head and I ruined it when I knocked on your door?”
I wish. “No.”
“Well, there you go.”
“But you think about your stories all the time. You write all the time,” I pointed out, annoyed that she was telling me to do the opposite of what she did.
“I don’t, actually. You just saw the tail end of my flailing.” She looked around. “Paper towels?”
“Here.” I walked over, tore a few sheets from under the shelf and handed them to her. Our fingers brushed. My fingertips prickled, a small electric current running all the way up my arm, down my spine and gathering somewhere south.
Did she feel it too?
Emily stilled for a second, her teeth digging into her lip. Her gaze darted from my hand to my face, then to the paper towels she was holding, and her shoulders sagged just a tad. With a small sigh, she turned away and started to pat the shrimp dry.
I didn’t understand her reluctance. The women I usually hung out with didn’t play I didn’t notice any spark between us games. Fine, Emily could pretend she hadn’t felt it. But I wasn’t going to go with that, because I didn’t share her reluctance.
I started to move closer, but a soft clearing of her throat stopped me.
“As I was saying,” she began, “I was seriously blocked for two weeks with this book, and I was freaking out because I really had to hit my deadline. So I read, I watched TV and movies and I slept. Oh, and had a nightly bubble bath.”
Okay, so she wanted to talk about my block. I crossed my arms and leaned against the counter space next to her, since figuring out why I was blocked was just as important as getting Emily to admit there was a spark between us.
“Did it work?” Bubble baths weren’t my thing, but…
“Nope,” she said. “That’s why I had to go run. It works wonders. You should try it.”
“I do run. As a matter of fact, I have a morning run at least three times a week. It doesn’t work. At least, not for me.” My mind usually stayed blank when I ran.
She turned around and stared at me in awe…or maybe terror. “What are you?”
“Uh… Is this a trick question?”
“Doesn’t the torture of exercise force you into creativity? I mean, so you can quit the self-abuse and go back to writing?”
I laughed. “Is that your motivation? Exercise is so bad that your mind has no choice but to come up with something so you can quit?”
“Yeah. It’s the nuclear option because it’s my absolute last resort…but it works. Just leaves me really tired and shaky. And definitely in need of a lot of sugar and fat. But sometimes I just have to accept that I need to let my mind work on something subconsciously. Trust the process even if I can’t feel it working.”
She tossed the garlic, butter and oil into the pan and started to stir everything around. The kitchen filled with the most amazing aroma. She then threw in all the shrimp, only using her wrist to flip and turn them.
“Did you ever work in a restaurant?” I asked as she drained the pasta and put it on plates in a swift motion. It was sexy as hell to watch her dominate the kitchen with such confidence. She could win one of those cooking competition shows that Cole and his fiancée loved so much.
“I waited tables in college. It was okay. College kids are usually too poor to tip well. Actually, they never spend enough in the first place.” She expertly put the shrimp and sauce on the pasta.
“Ever done a stint in a kitchen? I still haven’t mastered the art of flipping things in a flying pan like you just did.”
“Oh, that?” Emily flashed a smile, but it couldn’t quite hide a tinge of sadness underneath. “It isn’t hard. You just need a lot of practice.”
“Yeah, but you said you rarely cooked.”
She might’ve done it all the time for one of her exes. The notion sat with me as well as rancid almond butter. Based on her reaction, the bastard—or bastards—hadn’t appreciated her effort. If she cooked for me like this all the time I’d handle the cleanup, then draw her one of the bubble baths she seemed to like so much, lick her all over until…
Shrugging, Emily sprinkled chopped parsley over the shrimp scampi and took the plates to the dining room. I grabbed some utensils and helped her set the table, and she immediately returned to the kitchen to take the garlic bread out of the oven.
“Get the wine for me, would you?” she said.
I took out the bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge, uncorked it and handed it to her. While she placed it on the table, I grabbed two wine glasses.
“Perfect.” She smiled. “We have everything.”
I smiled too. It was such a sweetly domestic scene. I hadn’t experienced this much. My exes had been too busy to bother, and I realized I liked it a lot more than I’d expected.
I pulled out a chair for Emily, and she sat down.
“No salad or veggies?” I asked, half curious and half teasing, as I settled in my seat. I started to pour wine.
“We have plenty of greens.”
“Where?”
“Here.” She pointed at some parsley bits with her fork. “See how green that is? And garlic is considered a vegetable, I’m sure. Some kind of vegan thing, anyway. It doesn’t come from dead animals.”